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Friday, 4 August 2017

RPGaDAY2017: Day 4 - Which RPG have you played the most since August 2016?

Ok, this one's a bit easier!

I'm playing to two fortnightly games, Deadlands one week and Exalted the other, both running since well before August last year. I talked a bit about Deadlands for Day 1, so I'm going to talk a bit about Exalted now.

I like White Wolf games: I'm a huge fan of (old) World of Darkness following some amazing experiences at uni (which I think I talked about in the first RPGaDAY) and really enjoyed our Aberrant campaign, which I was pretty good about writing up on this blog (until we played a scenario based on a scene in Kingsmen and before I could write that up some arse in the States actually and for real shot up a bunch of people in a church and then other people starting burning down churches with people still in them, and suddenly I didn't want to write up our game). I think it stems from ShadowRun being one of my first RPG experiences: it gave me a thing for rolling handfuls of dice! (Or maybe earlier than that - I used to really enjoy the table top wargame Battlefleet Gothic).

Anyway, we reached a suitable break point in our Aberrant campaign, with a nice shiny cliffhanger, and the GM (Rich) wanted to run Exalted for a bit. Unfortunately for those of you enjoy my write-ups, a change in job shifted my fatigue levels around and I've had less time-energy to write, so all you've had has been the first session.

Which is a shame for you all, because it's been epic.

As with Aberrant, we've had a long 'intro' playing mortal characters. Unlike with Aberrant, where this lasted a few months game-time, we started as 8 year old twins and exalted at the age of 20 (I think. We might still be 19 or we might be 22. Those are the 3 numbers I have in my head). We're Solar exalts; he's Dawn caste and I'm Eclipse (for those that means anything to).

My character is Taji, the younger twin, and Bells is playing Kito. We're the youngest of 6 siblings, and spent the first 8 years of our life in a poor, rural village, which was destroyed a couple of days before our 8th birthday. We escaped and a very lucky result on a skill roll turned what was intended to be further childhood trauma into a protective close contact in a town called Thorns - which meant when Thorns got taken over by the dead a decade or so later, it was extra traumatic! (GM's who like your players to suffer hardship take note: sometimes letting the players enjoy their luck will bring you more reward long term. And less tongue-in-cheek, we really enjoyed the success of that roll and really enjoyed the interaction with ally, and really care what's happened to her!)

But I get ahead of myself. We went to Thorns because our eldest sister lived there. She told us to contact our uncle, who took us home with him, back in the Realm. Turned out, he's actually our grandfather and leader of one of the major houses (Cathak). We got to go to a good school and meet the Empress, until we'd incidentally caused enough trouble we were sent away to join the army. Where we obviously didn't cause any more trouble...

See, the thing is, in the world of Exalted(known as 'Creation'), you've got mortals and Heroic Mortals (like Taji and Kito, at that stage)and Dragon Blooded (like Kito and Taji's Grandfather and the Empress), and then you've got the Anathema, all the other Exalted types, people like Taji and Kito are now - and like the friends they kept making along the way. Which was why they got in trouble and sent off to join the army, and why after that they were put under house arrest and threatened with execution. A daring rescue by their former unit saw them safe, and it wasn't long after that that they Exalted - and found out a few more family secrets.

So we've just taken the First Age city of Denandsor, first step in reclaiming the world for the Solar Deliberative. You know, small goals and all that ;-)

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RPGaDAY was started by Dave Chapman and is currently curated by RPG Brigade. To join in yourself, follow the questions in the graphic and blog, vlog, tweet, or otherwise share your responses with the hashtag RPGaDAY2017.